“That’s not scientifically accurate!” It’s the greatest and deadliest of criticisms levelled at a work of science fiction. Almost, how dare something calling itself a science fiction be not entirely scientifically accurate. Is that not the point of the genre? To build fiction off scientific fact?
I wholeheartedly dismiss this view.
Looking at some of the most well-known and well-loved science fiction work, it’s difficult to find something that does not clearly contradict science at someone. Star Wars lightsabers don’t seem to follow the physics of laser beams. Inception doesn’t exactly feature an accurate representation of dream psychology. Battlestar Galactica‘s humanoid robots have some questionable logistics, biologically and mechanically. There is no sound in space; stuff doesn’t really explode in a vacuum.
Sorry, Return of the Jedi, but as far as I’m aware it wouldn’t look like that exactly.
However, that doesn’t automatically detract from these works. Star Wars is an epic opera about morality, falling from grace, and avoiding the mistakes of previous generations set against intergalactic war. Inception is about grief so deep that it poisons and learning to heal from that grief in a story about dream trespassers and thieves. Battlestar Galactica is about identity, what it means to be human, religion, and hope all wrapped up in a tale about the last humans running for their lives from vengeful robots.
As a genre, it is built out of science, but science is not the be all and end all. Yes. It’s nice to have science fiction works that are completely scientifically accurate. But is that really the point?
As a professor once said to my class, science fiction–the American brand of it, anyway–is really about philosophy. Americans tend to be pragmatists, thinking in terms of what something can do for them in concrete and hard terms. And so it is in their media. The metaphysical has no room. As a result, it gets shoved into science fiction and we all pretend the genre is just about special effects.
